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| Central American University - UCA |
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Number 134 | Septiembre 1992 |
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Nicaragua
NICARAGUA BRIEFS
Envío team
PROTESTS TURN VIOLENT
Three separate protests in Managua by distinct sectors, each with their own demands and tactics, converged in a moment of spontaneous but violent solidarity against police interference near the end of July. A two-day spate of confrontations left scores—mainly riot police—wounded, some seriously.
University students and administration—all the way up to the rectors themselves—had been protesting creatively and relatively peacefully in Managua and other cities for most of the month. Their single issue was a demand that the government release some $7 million to the economically strapped universities. They based their claim on the university autonomy law, which they read as stipulating that 6% of the government's income should be budgeted for regular university expenditures. The protestors were motivated by a well-founded fear that the universities would turn into institutions only for the wealthy elite should the government's quite different interpretation win out.
This concern, which spanned Nicaragua's otherwise polarized political spectrum, imbued the protest with unprecedented size, energy and snowballing support from unexpected quarters. When the government launched a campaign to break that support by manipulating both data and class sympathies (as in: if we have to bail out the badly administered universities, we can't build any primary schools in peasant communities that have none), the protesters countered with a daily education campaign in neighborhoods and shopping centers and on public thoroughfares.
Then, in mid-July, the army announced that it was discharging 2,000 more officers, bringing the institution down to 18,500. While their indemnification looked good on paper—among other things, 35 to 48 months of severance pay depending on years of service—army salaries are so low that they rebelled against the stipulation that all but six-months' worth would be doled out monthly. On July 20, hundreds of newly retired officers marched to the presidential offices to demand 60 months' severance pay and in one lump sum, as well as rural or urban land as previously retired officers had received. On behalf of those discharged earlier, the National Commission of Retired Officers demanded the titling of those earlier properties—except those given to high-ranking officers, which the commission wanted redistributed to low-ranking retirees, who had received next to nothing.
Meanwhile, state-employed Managua bus drivers were having no luck annulling a new private bus route that crossed several of their established routes, thus cutting into the fare percentage they receive on top of their basic wage. By July 20, the ENABUS drivers had convinced non-competing private bus cooperatives, who had a number of issues of their own, to join them in parking their buses around the Ministry of Construction and Transport (MCT), a few blocks from the presidential building.
The first clash was that same afternoon, when the military protestors and some students supported the striking bus drivers when anti-riot police used tear gas, reportedly to disperse bus drivers trying to stop firemen from dousing tires they had set on fire. Toll: 7 children hospitalized due to tear gas, and several citizens and at least 40 police hurt, 7 seriously, by projectiles. Result: MCT negotiators opened talks, which after 15 hours led to a "temporary suspension" of the bus strike when the government accepted some of the drivers' demands and agreed to review others.
The next morning the military protestors, who had camped out all night across from the presidential building, held the vice minister of finance for over an hour to persuade him of their cause. They released him only when police chief Rene Vivas intervened, dissuading them from trying to exchange him for Major General Joaquín Cuadra. Later that afternoon they learned that negotiations with the head of army personnel had ended in "total failure."
About 8:00 that same night, in an unclear order of events, armed military protestors "ambushed" a police patrol car and riot police shot tear gas to disperse the ex-officers. By midnight, the area had been declared a "zone of police operations" and shortly afterward, an armed army contingent was sent in to "reestablish order." The former officers made an orderly military retreat to where the bus drivers were awaiting news of their talks, and both groups slept the rest of the night in the nearby national baseball stadium. Toll of the 8 pm clash: 20 police, 2 ex-officers and an ENABUS worker with gunshot or other wounds. Result: Talks resumed but broke down again on July 24, and some soldiers began a hunger strike to press their demands. Fifteen military protestors were arrested in connection with the violence. Army head General Humberto Ortega, flanked by Police Chief Vivas, unequivocally condemned the violent protest methods in a taped statement that was shown repeatedly on TV.
"TONYGATE" GOES TO COURT
The Comptroller General's investigation into embezzlement charges against former Vice Minister of the Presidency Tony Ibarra has been mired in political intrigue. The chief intriguers seem to be top-level politicians and government officials from the Social Democratic Party—among them legislative head Alfredo César and Comptroller General Guillermo Potoy—while the chief targets are Minister of the Presidency Antonio Lacayo and the centrist group of the UNO parliamentary bench, which, while small, can swing a vote away from the rightwing majority by allying with the sizeable FSLN minority bench.
Alfredo César brought Ibarra, a Nicaraguan-born US citizen who sat out last decade’s war in the United States and is reported to have CIA links, into his high-level UNO government post. He fled to Miami late last year when rumors that he had embezzled up to $1 million in government funds became too hot to deny. Comptroller Potoy's office has been investigating the case ever since, and its findings were released by Potoy in a lengthy press conference on June 17—without first sending a copy of the 223-page report to the President's office.
That was not the first sign of Potoy's marked absence of professional and apolitical decorum. Two days earlier, an article in El Nuevo Herald, The Miami Herald's Spanish-language supplement, cited Potoy saying that Antonio Lacayo had tried to stall his investigation against Ibarra. A day before that, Ibarra sent a letter to Potoy, notarized by the Nicaraguan Consul in Miami, retracting various public declarations he had earlier made against Lacayo and charging a brother of César as well as his key legislative assistant with "pressure and blackmail" to get him to blame Lacayo for bribery and misuse of funds. Potoy denied the letter's existence.
In his press conference, Potoy reported that he had found "presumption of penal responsibility" in Ibarra, 21 other government employees and Ibarra family members, and 5 UNO Assembly representatives, allegedly bribed to take their centrist, pro-Lacayo positions. He accused Lacayo himself of 7 acts of hindering his investigation, of "presumed administrative responsibility" and even of being a "co-author" of Ibarra's embezzlement from the US-financed Fund for Aid to the Socially Oppressed. Far exceeding his mandate to gather and present evidence that a case should be opened, Potoy requested President Chamorro to "immediately remove" Lacayo.
On July-20, just before departing for the Ibero-American Summit in Spain (and thus narrowly avoiding the violence on her office lawn the next day), President Chamorro told reporters that if Lacayo goes, "Violeta goes too. I say publicly now that I am not replacing him." In a message to the nation that same morning, she ratified her commitment to "dynamic, honest and efficient government" and to eliminate "the confusion of the interests of the state and nation with the interests of any political party."
Amid angry denials of involvement by the accused centrist parliamentarians and articles in La Prensa—whose president is Violeta Chamorro's daughter and Lacayo's wife—claiming that no evidence could be found against Lacayo in Potoy's report, the attorney general's office began its own review of the report for purposes of filing criminal charges.
JULY 19: THE SIZE SURPRISES ALL
Days before the anniversary itself, the FSLN began its celebration of the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship with events in each city on the day of their liberation and debates among Sandinistas in Barricada and on pro-Sandinista radio stations about the party's internal transformations. On July 19 itself, simultaneous commemorative marches and rallies were held in Managua, León, Matagalpa and a number of other cities and towns, each of the largest ones headed by a member of the FSLN National Directorate.
In Managua alone, between 40,000 and 50,000 Sandinistas packed the Plaza of the Revolution to hear a typically specific and incisive speeches by Managua FSLN department head Victor Hugo Tinoco, National Workers Front head Lucio Jiménez and FSLN secretary general Daniel Ortega. Tinoco and Jiménez both committed their respective organizations to continue civic protest, dialogue and "concertación," but, through detailed examples of government noncompliance, they made clear that their patience was not unlimited. Ortega, who clearly placed his party on the side of the poor and against US interference in Nicaragua, warned in particular that Sandinistas would take up arms again before allowing the US government to change the composition of the armed forces, again installing a "Somocista" army and police. A number of those interviewed in the plaza said they had come in order to show the United States and the Chamorro government the FSLN and the organized power of the Nicaraguan people should not be underestimated.
The full-color aerial view of the Managua plaza in Barricada rivaled that of any mass demonstration during the 10 years of FSLN government, a perception shared by many at the event itself. The size and enthusiasm of the crowd, which had come from all over the municipality after spending the whole previous night in noisy celebration, surprised even the organizers, who had not hoped for more than 35,000. "This time you can't say we brought them here in state vehicles from around the country," more than one Sandinista commented. Many arrived on foot, others in the vehicles of enterprises newly privatized to workers, and still others by public bus—while many of the latter paid their fares, Sandinista drivers reportedly let those sporting red and black bandannas ride free.
With a break only for the 122 delegates to attend the anniversary celebrations, the third meeting of Latin American leftist political organizations involved in the "Sao Paulo Forum" got underway in Managua on July 16, after several days of preparatory meetings by its working group. The latter body is made up of the FSLN, El Salvador's FMLN, the Workers' Party of Brazil, Mexico's Democratic Revolutionary Party, Peru's United Left, Uruguay's Broad Front, the Cuban Communist Party and Bolivia Libre. Over 60 parties and movements attended the Managua meeting, together with 23 observer delegations from Europe, Asia, Africa and North America.
The first such meeting was held in Sao Paulo, Brazil in July 1990, and the second In Mexico a year later, with the goal of reevaluating the role of the Latin American left in the new world situation. In March of this year, a group of leftist economists linked to the Forum met in Lima, Peru, where they prepared a discussion document of alternatives to neoliberal policy.
In the final document of the Managua meeting, the participants called on the United States to stop its "illegal and immoral" blockade of Cuba and its interference in Nicaragua's internal affairs. It also called for the restitution of President Aristide in Haiti, full compliance with the peace accords in El Salvador and the construction of a new international economic and political order. In an accompanying solidarity document, the forum recognized the need for strengthening ties among the peoples of the South and greater unified actions among the South's leftist forces. Among other issues, it called for the legal lifting of sanctions against the people of Iraq and the imposition of UN sanctions against South Africa's apartheid government.
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a monthly magazine of analysis on Central America